Seasonally Changing Interactions of Species Traits of Termites and Trees Promote Complementarity in Coarse Wood Decomposition.

Complementary resource use by functionally different species may accelerate ecosystem processes. However, how co-variation in plant traits and animal traits promotes complementarity through temporal plant-animal interactions is poorly understood, even less so in detrital systems, thereby hampering our fundamental understanding of decomposition and carbon turnover. We hypothesised that, in seasonal subtropical forests where termites are major deadwood decomposers, trait complementarity of both termite species and tree species should promote overall deadwood decomposition through different seasons and years.

Effects of plant diversity on productivity strengthen over time due to trait-dependent shifts in species overyielding.

Plant diversity effects on community productivity often increase over time. Whether the strengthening of diversity effects is caused by temporal shifts in species-level overyielding (i.e.

Meta-analysis reveals that vertebrates enhance plant litter decomposition at the global scale.

Evidence is mounting that vertebrate defaunation greatly impacts global biogeochemical cycling. Yet, there is no comprehensive assessment of the potential vertebrate influence over plant decomposition, despite litter decay being one of the largest global carbon fluxes. We therefore conducted a global meta-analysis to evaluate vertebrate effects on litter mass loss and associated element release across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

Size matters for linking traits to ecosystem multifunctionality.

A priority research field addresses how to optimize diverse ecosystem services to people, including biodiversity support, regulatory, utilitarian and cultural services. This field may benefit from linking ecosystem services to the sizes of different body parts of organisms, with functional traits as the go-between. Using woody ecosystems to explore such linkages, we hypothesize that across stem diameter classes from trunk via branches to twigs, key wood and bark functional traits (especially those defining size-shape and resource economics spectra) vary both within individual trees and shrubs and across woody species, thereby together boosting ecosystem multifunctionality.

Influences of the bark economics spectrum and positive termite feedback on bark and xylem decomposition.

The plant economics spectrum integrates trade-offs and covariation in resource economic traits of different plant organs and their consequences for pivotal ecosystem processes, such as decomposition. However, in this concept stems are often considered as one unit ignoring the important functional differences between wood (xylem) and bark. These differences may not only affect the performance of woody plants during their lifetime, but may also have important "afterlife effects.

Robust leaf trait relationships across species under global environmental changes.

Recent studies show coordinated relationships between plant leaf traits and their capacity to predict ecosystem functions. However, how leaf traits will change within species and whether interspecific trait relationships will shift under future environmental changes both remain unclear. Here, we examine the bivariate correlations between leaf economic traits of 515 species in 210 experiments which mimic climate warming, drought, elevated CO, and nitrogen deposition.

Large Underestimation of Intraspecific Trait Variation and Its Improvements.

Intraspecific trait variation (ITV) is common feature of natural communities and has gained increasing attention due to its significant ecological effects on community dynamics and ecosystem functioning. However, the estimation of ITV has yet to receive much attention, despite the need for accurate ITV estimation for trait-based ecological inferences. It remains unclear if, and to what extent, current estimations of ITV are biased.

Growing-season temperature and precipitation are independent drivers of global variation in xylem hydraulic conductivity.

Stem xylem-specific hydraulic conductivity (K ) represents the potential for plant water transport normalized by xylem cross section, length, and driving force. Variation in K has implications for plant transpiration and photosynthesis, growth and survival, and also the geographic distribution of species. Clarifying the global-scale patterns of K and its major drivers is needed to achieve a better understanding of how plants adapt to different environmental conditions, particularly under climate change scenarios.

Species with moderate intraspecific trait variability are locally abundant within an environmentally heterogeneous subtropical forest.

Species with large intraspecific trait variability (ITV) have larger niche breadth than species with low ITV and thus are expected to be more abundant at the local scale. However, whether the positive ITV-abundance relationship holds in heterogeneous local environments remains uncertain. Using an individual-based trait dataset encompassing three leaf traits (leaf area, specific leaf area, and leaf dry mass content) of 20,248 individuals across 80 species in an environmentally heterogeneous subtropical forest in eastern China, ITV for each trait of each species was estimated by rarefaction.

Rhizosphere effects on soil microbial community structure and enzyme activity in a successional subtropical forest.

Forest succession is a central ecological topic due to the importance of its dynamic process for terrestrial ecosystems. However, we have limited knowledge of the relationship between forest succession and belowground microbiota, particularly regarding interactions in the rhizosphere. Here, we determined microbial community structure and biomass using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) biomarkers and microbial activity using extracellular enzyme activity in bulk and rhizosphere soils from three successional stages of subtropical forests in eastern China.

Size-dependent variations in individual traits and trait scaling relationships within a shade-tolerant evergreen tree species.

Premise Of Study: The plant size-trait relationship is a fundamental dimension in the spectrum of plant form and function. However, it remains unclear whether the trait scaling relationship within species is modified by tree size. Investigating size-dependent trait covariations within species is crucial for understanding the ontogenetic constraints on the intraspecific economic spectrum and, more broadly, the structure and causes of intraspecific trait variations.

Linking intraspecific trait variability and spatial patterns of subtropical trees.

The importance of intraspecific trait variability (ITV) to the spatial distribution of individual species is unclear. We hypothesized that intraspecific trait dispersions underlying niche processes deviate more from null model expectations, by reducing their spread (range and variance), kurtosis, and standard deviation of near-neighbor distance, for species with aggregated than those with random distributions. The link between species' spatial distributions and ITV patterns was examined using an individual tree-based trait data set, in which specific leaf area, mean leaf area, leaf dry matter content, and diameter at breast height were measured for 18,773 stems of 45 species in a 4.

The plant economics spectrum is structured by leaf habits and growth forms across subtropical species.

The plant economics spectrum that integrates the combination of leaf and wood syndromes provides a useful framework for the examination of species strategies at the whole-plant level. However, it remains unclear how species that differ in leaf habits and growth forms are integrated within the plant economics spectrum in subtropical forests. We measured five leaf and six wood traits across 58 subtropical plant species, which represented two leaf habits (evergreen vs deciduous) and two growth forms (tree vs shrub) in eastern China.

Community-weighted mean of leaf traits and divergence of wood traits predict aboveground biomass in secondary subtropical forests.

Subtropical forests are globally important in providing ecological goods and services, but it is not clear whether functional diversity and composition can predict aboveground biomass in such forests. We hypothesized that high aboveground biomass is associated with high functional divergence (FDvar, i.e.

Scaling relationships among twig size, leaf size and leafing intensity in a successional series of subtropical forests.

Scaling relationships among twig size, leaf size and leafing intensity fundamentally influence the twig-leaf deployment pattern, a property that affects the architecture and functioning of plants. However, our understanding of how these relationships change within a species or between species as a function of forest succession is unclear. We determined log-log scaling relationships between twig cross-sectional area (twig size) and each of total and individual leaf area, and leafing intensity (the number of leaves per twig volume) for 78 woody species along a successional series in subtropical evergreen forests in eastern China.

Plant trait-species abundance relationships vary with environmental properties in subtropical forests in eastern china.

Understanding how plant trait-species abundance relationships change with a range of single and multivariate environmental properties is crucial for explaining species abundance and rarity. In this study, the abundance of 94 woody plant species was examined and related to 15 plant leaf and wood traits at both local and landscape scales involving 31 plots in subtropical forests in eastern China. Further, plant trait-species abundance relationships were related to a range of single and multivariate (PCA axes) environmental properties such as air humidity, soil moisture content, soil temperature, soil pH, and soil organic matter, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) contents.

[Frost-resistance of subtropical evergreen woody plants: an evaluation based on plant functional traits].

Evaluating the frost-resistance of evergreen woody plants is of significance in guiding the species selection in forest management in subtropical region. In this paper, an investigation was made on the functional traits (including specific leaf area, stem wood density, leaf area, leaf dry matter content, leaf relative electrical conductance, and twig wood density) of 64 common evergreen broad-leaved and coniferous woody plant species in the Ningbo region of Zhejiang Province, East China, after a severe snowstorm in early 2008, aimed to select the evergreen woody plants with high ability of freeze-tolerance, and to establish a related evaluation system. By using a hierarchy analysis approach, the weight values of the functional traits of each species were determined, and an index system for evaluating the plants tolerance ability against freeze and mechanical damage was established.

[Sprouting ecology of woody plants: a research review].

Sprouting is an efficient regeneration means of woody plants to regain their biomass loss after disturbances. This paper reviewed the biological characteristics of sprouting, and its consequences on woody plants individual life history, dynamics of population and community, and biogeography. Many achievements have been obtained on the researches of sprouting strategy and its relationships with disturbances, but less is known about the ecological significances of sprouting, and especially, its effects on the structure and dynamics of woody plants population and community.